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customguitars87 wrote:I recommend mahogany. My V6X has a mahogany neck and body with a walnut top, the colors look beautiful together, weight is a-ok, and the guitar is exceptionally warm with great balance.

I had not read that about walnut tops.Well, I had a DC127, mahog neck and body, walnut top.Bottom line, NO it did not warm anything up. Whether that was the neck-thru, or denseness of the walnut, etc. It was closer to my heavy, all maple DC135 - very fundamental. I did not really bond with it, and sold it.Then again, I've been moving away from neck-thru to set or bolt neck over the years.

robertkoa wrote:In the past and here a lot of Players have reported that the Walnut Tops seem to warm up the Guitars (in addition to string saver saddles ).

Aside from wood unpredictability etc - do most of you with the Walnut tops feel that it mutes the highs in a good way , often ' warmer ' ?

I have read and heard all sorts of things over the years, but I have not actually played a walnut top/or walnut body guitar yet.If you google claro walnut guitar tone and you will get all sorts of opinions.some say it’s slightly brighter with solid focused lows. others have said they have similar built guitars one with maple top one with claro top and say they are pretty similar yet slightly different. I have heard that string saver saddles work well at saving strings but they also hurt sustain. Is that true? I have no idea.

If we were to build 20 solid body guitars with different types of wood tops and all the other options were the same I suspect the relative hardness weight and density of the tops used would have a subtle effect on the overall resonance of the instrument and which frequencies were emphasized. The quandary is that even with super consistent production techniques is that wood is wood and no two pieces are exactly the same. So the body and neck woods are a variable even though they are the same type of wood. the choice of wood tops avaialable is pretty staggering also as are their relative desities and weights. Some are super hard and other closer to glueing cork to you guitar body, they will all vary from top to top just within their own wood type. My own opinion for solid bodies is buy what appeals to you visually top wise and buy what you trust body and neck wise. In the end I still believe the pickups will have way more effect than the top.plain maple flamed maple quilted mapleburled maplespalted mapleflamed koaplain koaclaro walnutwalnutmohoganypoplar burlswamp ashroyal ebonybuckeye burlzebra woodzircotecocoboloalderwengeredwood

Last edited by dbone on Tue Nov 06, 2018 8:04 pm, edited 4 times in total.

I had a claro walnut topped HF2 years back that definitely seemed more 'trebley' than the flame maple topped one that it replaced. But that is a floating top, chambered instrument. Not sure (I doubt) if a solid body would yield the same results.

It's too bad that Kiesel has cranked the prices for fancy top woods sky high from where they were only a couple of years ago. I love the look of claro-walnut, but I'm not going to add $350 to the price of a build for something that is, for the most part, cosmetic appearance. Especially in a small bodied, headless model that has a large bevel that chops away a significant portion of that expensive, fancy top - and one that only requires a 1/2" (or so) laminate to begin with. Heck, even a plain walnut top is $200. Maybe it's just a realistic reflection in the actual cost of raw, high quality furniture woods in this crazy day and age.

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